"In the beginning sperm came from men"
That's the tag line for the new film, "The Baby Formula." In the movie, two lesbians get pregnant using sperm derived from each other's stem cells. Men become reproductively superfluous. This scenario in which stem cells are transformed into sperm is not too far fetched since it has already been done in mice. Eventually possible? Maybe. Controversial? You bet. Makes designer babies look tame.
As a CNEWS article about the film notes:
Still, the mere idea of lesbian couples (or gay men using a surrogate mother) having a baby with their own genetic material is sure to horrify some people.
As the religious mother of one of the women in "The Baby Formula" says: "Who do you think you are, God? … You're stealing the Immaculate Conception from Jesus."
Yet Caulfield wonders if safety issues could someday be overcome, "is there anything inherently wrong with allowing a lesbian couple to give birth. I don't know that there is."
"I think we have to move beyond the sort of yuck response," he says. "When we start regulating and curtailing technologies and setting up barriers, I do think we need to do it on a principle basis."
It wasn't that long ago that sperm donation and test-tube babies were thought disgusting by some, he says. Now they're accepted practice.
"I think the yuck response is a good reason for caution and a good reason for reflection, but it's not a justification for prohibition."
"We do evolve. There is social accommodation that occurs and I think with a lot of these new technologies, that's also going to be the case."
I'm betting on social accommodation.
Whole CNEWS article here.
